SEVERAL HUNDRED SKULL PEOPLE dismounted from their horses and began gutting wolves and dressing meat. Others built fires and set up camp. A final group began burying our dead.
While Helen ministered to my bloody leg, my eyes scanned the faces.
“She’s not here, Book.”
It was Goodman Dougherty. He knelt alongside me, checking my wound. He’d been my boss back at the Wheel, and although he was now down to maybe 250 pounds as opposed to the 300 from before, he looked much the same. His clothes were a combination of torn denim and faded leather, and his beard was thicker and bushier than ever.
“Who?” I asked.
“Your grandmother.” My eyebrows must have arched in surprised, because he went on to explain. “We heard how you came to their rescue.”
“She didn’t make it?”
“Passed away not long after you all left.”
Maybe it was the wound, maybe it was the thought of my grandmother’s final moments, but whatever it was, I felt suddenly dizzy. The blood drained from my face.
Goodman Dougherty placed a thick hand on my shoulder. “You all right there, chief?”
“I’m fine.” But of course I wasn’t. I wanted—needed—her to survive. There was so much I wanted to ask her. Not just about my family. Like why on earth she seemed to think I could save the country.
“And I believe you know this old bat,” Dougherty said.
I swiveled my head to see Goodwoman Marciniak. Her hair was whiter than I remembered it, and her wrinkles more pronounced, but her eyes still twinkled with warmth.
She gave Dougherty a slap on one of his beefy arms. “I heard that.” Then she turned to me and said, “It’s nice to see you again, Book.”
She stretched out her arms, and as we hugged, it hit me how grateful I was she had made it out of the Compound. She was now the closest link to my grandmother.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get that wound cleaned up and some food into you all. Then we’ll talk.”
Sitting around a series of blazing fires and eating grilled wolf, we told the Skull People our stories, and they told us theirs. Those who had survived the ambush of the Crazies had escaped through the very tunnel that was now littered with corpses. When I told them that the Compound was no more, you could see the sorrow etched on their faces.
“How have you been surviving since your escape?” Flush asked.
“Wandering, mostly,” Goodman Dougherty answered. “Playing hide-and-seek with the Crazies. Hunting and foraging. Trying to find food to fill our bellies.” He slapped his ample stomach. “That’s easier for my friends than me.”
He turned to the side and hawked up a ball of phlegm. It was as if the cave dust was still embedded in his lungs.
“Where are the Crazies now?” I asked.
“Hard to say. We’ve ridden through a few towns where they used to live, and we can’t find any sign of them. Maybe they’re riding out the winter in some cave—who knows? Come spring, I’m sure they’ll reappear like the cockroaches that they are. No love lost between the Skullies and the Crazies.”
It was true. The Crazies wanted nothing to do with law and order. They’d just as soon everyone followed their own rules.
“So why’d they join forces with the Hunters and ambush you?” I asked.
“Don’t know for sure, but it must be that they want guns.”
“And the Hunters? What’d they get out of it?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, all right. Why? Have you seen ’em recently?”
Dougherty noticed the look I shared with my friends, and I told him about the ambush at Dodge’s, the capture on the ice floe, the wolf attack. When I finished, he let out a long, low whistle.
“Gotta hand it to you,” he said. “You all knocked off two sets of enemies in one three-day period: first the Hunters, and now the wolves.”
“With some help from our friends.”
“Sure, but that makes your life a whole lot easier, don’t it?”
Yes, I wanted to answer, but there are still plenty of enemies out there.
I looked around. Ripples of laughter bounced from one conversation to another, and it was good to see everyone enjoying themselves. The Skull People seemed rejuvenated by the Less Thans and Sisters, and we liked being in the company of elders. Also, it was comforting to finally be around people who weren’t trying to kill us.
“So where are you headed?” Goodwoman Marciniak asked.
“To the next territory.”
“You’re going to the Conclave?”
There was that word again, the one the Man in Orange had refused to explain. My expression must have made it obvious that I had no idea what Marciniak was talking about.
“The Conclave is a series of celebrations,” she said. “First and foremost, it’s the inauguration of the next president. Plus it’s the twenty-first anniversary of Omega. As his final act, President Vasquez wants to bring everyone together. ‘Wiping the slate clean,’ he calls it. A time for reconciliation.”
“And you’re going?” I couldn’t believe they could be so forgiving after all that had been done to them.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Goodman Dougherty said. “We may not agree with everything this government does, but hell, we’re not getting any younger. And it’ll be better to be part of something than against it. And maybe in a future year we can get some of our own people elected.”
A sudden anger boiled within me. I wasn’t so ready to forgive. Not after being raised in Camp Liberty and having seen my friends slaughtered before my eyes.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the map of the United States. I unfolded it on the snow.
“Well, well, well,” Dougherty said. “What do we have here?”
“A map.”
“I can see that. Where’d you get it?”
“I took it from the Compound library.”
“You ripped that out of a book?” Goodwoman Marciniak asked, looking mortified.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“A library book?” It looked like she might pass out.
“Ease up on the boy, Marjorie,” Dougherty said. “It’s just a couple pages.”
Marjorie did not appear the least bit pacified by Goodman Dougherty’s words.
I wanted to remind her that the Compound was now just a pile of rubble, and that I actually saved these two maps from destruction. But that probably wouldn’t have swayed her. A library book was a library book.
Goodman Dougherty leaned over the map, his greasy fingers sliding from one town to the next.
“It’s been twenty years since I’ve seen one of these. Almost forgot what they look like.”
Others leaned in to have a look, studying the map with something like reverence. For me, it was like magic, as though this rectangle of paper with its squiggly lines and mysterious place names held vast secrets.
“Near as I can tell, we’re about here,” Goodman Dougherty said, pointing to a spot in the middle of nowhere.
“And the Conclave?”
He dragged his finger east to a place where two rivers met. “Should be about here, I’m guessing.”
“That’s where the inauguration is?”
“Yup. Three weeks from now, that’s where they’ll be swearing in the new president.”
“What’s his name, by the way?”
“Her name,” he corrected me. “A woman by the name of Cynthia Maddox.”
Every Less Than and Sister stopped what they were doing. My heart rose in my throat.
“What’s the matter?” Dougherty asked. “You all look like you just seen a ghost.”
“Cynthia Maddox as in Chancellor Maddox?” I asked.
“That’s the one.”
“She’s going to be the next president?”
“Won by a landslide, apparently.”
“Then we can’t let the inauguration happen,” I said.
Dougherty and Marciniak shared a look. “Why not?”
“Because it’ll be the death of every one of us here.”